


Feline Genes

by qkind



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Disabled Character, Cats, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, M/M, Vines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 18:39:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5015821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qkind/pseuds/qkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik never wanted to be vine famous, and certainly not like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feline Genes

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Sara who is the beautiful person that got me into Cherik more than a year ago and thus is the reason for 90% of what I'm thinking about at any momet of any given day - thank you!! You poetic, noble land mermaid.

Erik was coming down from his room at headquarters when he began to notice the stares. He puffed up with pride at the thought that after more than thirty years being the head of the Brotherhood, he still inspired these young mutants enough that they stopped doing whatever it was they were doing to watch him make his way down to his main office. He unashamedly took the long route to the basement for more people to have a chance to see him and, consequently, worship him.

It wasn’t until he was in front of his office door, still feeling eyes on his back, that he heard the first snigger. Which was followed by more quiet laughing. He turned around and everyone suddenly looked away, but he saw Shadowcat biting her lip clearly trying not to laugh.

He quickly opened the door and shut himself inside his office. Was it the helmet? He had fallen asleep in it, it wouldn’t be the first time he had a big, ugly, red mark running across his cheek. He took the hand mirror he kept stashed in one of his drawers – locked, to avoid Emma rummaging through it and having more blackmail material than she already had – and looked at himself. He had nothing on his face, so it had to be something about his clothes. Maybe he was wearing the cape inside out? No, stupid, he’d had the cape made seamless and took care of not hanging it in the sun to dry so the colour wouldn’t wash out. There wasn’t an inside or an outside to the cape.

The mirror was too small to take a good look at all of himself but he still didn’t see anything out of place. What had all that been about?

He felt the door knob turning and he stashed the mirror back in the drawer before Emma could see into the office – and it couldn’t be anyone other than Emma, if they were coming in without knocking.

Sitting back in his chair and schooling his features into his trademark glare, he waited for her to close the door and sit herself in the intentionally uncomfortable plastic monstrosity he bought to make visitors leave quickly. His glare intensified when she found her openly smirking instead of looking bored as usual.

"What." Emma’s smirk grew teeth at that, and Erik knew it had to be really bad. He discreetly looked down to his pants but they were fine, and most importantly, zipped up.

"Sugar, you don’t know how amusing it is to be the one to show you." Her eyes got a bit of an evil glint at that, and Erik started to sweat.

She spent a deliberately long time taking out her phone and doing _things_ on it before handing it to him.

There was a frozen video on the screen. He hit the play button and a kitten appeared. Said kitten stood on two unsteady legs and opened his jaws. Instead of meowing though, Erik’s voice rang loud and clear. _‘Listen carefully, homo sapiens, because I will say this only once!’_ The kitten wobbled dangerously but remained standing. _‘Your reign as Earth’s dominant species is formally at an end!’_ The tiny and pitiful and absolutely not cute creature finally succumbed to his destiny and fell backwards on the floor. 

The video looped, and Erik watched it again, horrified. Emma was laughing herself sick, and Erik just watched the video three, four, ten times until he finally snapped out of his trance and fried Emma’s phone. And just to be sure no one close would watch it anytime soon he fried every phone he could feel in a ten mile radius. 

***** 

Erik slammed the door to his office open and stood there for a few seconds relishing the sudden silence in the floor. With his head held high, his shoulders squared, his feet shoulder-width apart and his cape subtly undulating – and that was a complete coincidence and not careful consideration on his part when he had the air conditioner installed – he finally asked the most important thing to be asked. 

" Who was it?"

Only the hum of the computers could be heard. Emma had gone conspicuously silent, probably enjoying the show. After all, it was bound to involve some kind of maiming. 

"Who. Was. It?"

A few heads dropped, a few pairs of eyes looked away. And, finally, somewhere to his right and hidden behind a computer screen, almost too quiet to be heard, someone whispered _‘Catneto’_. 

" _What?!_ "

Erik took half a step back in horror and only managed not to trip on his cape in the last second. He was aware he’d dropped his fear-inducing Magneto stance, but he couldn’t care about that in that precise instant with all the blood on his body seemingly going to his head. 

A round face with long, black hair with two streaks of white in the front came out from behind the screen looking panicked but resolute. 

" Catneto. That, um, that’s the username? Of t-the viner. Uploader. Of the, um, v-video. Sir."

As if this couldn’t get any more humiliating! Seeing as his underlings started to lose composure he got the feeling he wouldn’t manage a graceful retreat, so he said something that might have been words, or might have been a string of grumbling sounds of despair, and went back upstairs to lock himself and his thoughts in his room again. 

***** 

All was not lost. It couldn’t be. He just had to come up with a strategy that turned this mess around into something good for the cause. 

While it had been more than ten years since they’d needed to bust a research facility that experimented on mutants, there were still a lot of work to be done. They might be doing a lot more paperwork and a lot less action than at the Brotherhood’s beginnings, but they were still needed. The road to equality might work them hard, but at the end of the day nothing felt better than being responsible for the little changes that made life for mutants more just and, equally important, dignified. 

But try as he might, even though the stupid damned video might reach a really large audience and get them the exposure they needed to get more funds coming their way, Erik couldn’t see this whole mess as something positive. He just couldn’t. It had already more than one hundred thousand loops! And it hadn’t even been a whole day, so the numbers would go up for a while. That meant that in just one day, counting that the average person wouldn’t watch it more than ten times, ten thousand people had seen it and consequently laughed at him. 

So he was a vain, proud man who didn’t like being laughed at. So what? His life was terrible. 

There was nothing for it. He’d have to find the culprit and once he got them he’d put all his mind into devising the harshest punishment he could inflict on them while not crossing into doing something illegal. 

There was only one way of going about this plan swiftly, really. He’d have to ask Charles for help. 

***** 

When he reached the limits of the Xavier state he took his helmet off. It made him feel almost naked, as used as he was to it, but he’d learned in previous incursions to the mansion that it wouldn’t be tolerated and would get him kicked out by the giant blue plush bear that was Beast. Which wasn’t an experience he really wanted to relive. 

Taking a deep breath, he started down the path that lead to the main entrance. He had a carefully crafted speech prepared for Charles, and he was going to deliver it perfectly, as good as the 34 times he’d done it in the car on the way from New York. 

Almost all the lights were off at this time but he had no expectations of surprising Charles. No, two meters from the door he felt his chair moving around on the second floor. He let himself in and took care of closing the door quietly to avoid any run-ins with anyone. He followed the metal signature of the chair and found himself in the study, Charles in his pajamas and with two glasses and a bottle of scotch ready on the table. 

"Erik."

"Charles."

Charles looked up from the glass he was pouring and his mouth twitched, almost as if he was trying no to – 

Erik felt queasy all of a sudden. He hadn’t planned for this! I mean, sure, he wanted Charles to find the culprit so in some way he had to be aware of the crime, but he never thought he’d already seen that damned, stupid, idiotic – that video! Erik forgot his speech and his resolve not to beg and as difficult as it sounded, his ego, and threw himself face down in the sofa. 

His head buried in a pillow as it was, something with meaning might have come out of his mouth, or might have not. But who needs words to communicate with a telepath anyway. 

"No, I will not use Cerebro to find this cat person so that you can hang him from the Statue of Liberty," Charles said, unable to keep his amusement out of his voice, "and it isn’t as bad as you make it to be, you’ve actually become very popular amongst the younger generations, maybe you can win some to the cause". 

Erik turned his head so he could direct his accusatory glare straight to Charles’ eyes, who had made his way around the table to sit in front of the sofa. Because that was just like him – using his own conclusions about this to make him feel guilty about his reaction. 

"Emma calls me kitten now", he was absolutely not pouting. And this just made Charles bark a surprised laugh. 

"That’s actually not bad as endearments go". He had that fond look on his face, the one that Erik swore he hated but actually made him feel really warm inside. "Come on, budge over". 

Erik turned full on his side and sled down the sofa a bit, bending his legs so he could fit. Charles transferred himself from the chair and once he was comfortably situated he found himself with Erik’s head on his lap. 

Not unlike a cat, actually. 

Erik got the lights, and since he hadn’t had time to rekindle the fire on the hearth, only the low glow of the embers remaining from last night illuminated the room, giving it a warm feel. Charles resigned himself to wake up the next morning aching all over, and closed his eyes to sleep. It wasn’t as bad as he made it sound in his head. 

He heard more than felt Erik making himself comfortable as well, and brought up a hand to his head. 

Erik froze. 

" _Are you actually scratching behind my ears?!!_ "

***** 

Some undefined time later, embers completely consumed and all rooms in the house silent again, a dark shadow moved along the corridors in the second floor until it reached the door to the study. Slipping silently inside, it then stood in front of the sofa, where two men were sleeping, one’s head in the other’s lap. 

Phone in hand, it realized it was too dark to get any good camera quality. Turning the flash on would be risky but it would also be worth it. 

The tiny but powerful light of the camera flash came on, and the shadow started recording. The sudden influx of light made the man lying down twitch and mumble something intelligible before seemingly slipping again into unconsciousness. 

A blue scaled hand turned the camera back off again and disappeared as swiftly as it had come. 

The editing time for this one would be ridiculously short, she thought. Erik had involuntarily played the perfect part. It was only a matter of adding a tiny and cutesy meow to it and it’d be even funnier than the first! 

But they’d clearly know who she was after this, the people who’d sneak on them in the mansion were too few for anything else. Some would say the cat was out of the bag, and she couldn’t hold her laugh in at that thought. 

Erik would surely hunt for her, but. Well. She would be waiting for him. With the third vine. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at maqqneto.tumblr.com :)
> 
> I really love vines, okay? And new technologies fics. So I had to do this. (And I'll leave my favourite vine here in case you're curious, it has nothing to do with cats https://vine.co/v/Mlv9ul1DFlD)
> 
> Also, completely unrelated but it kind of inspired the title for this, does anyone else think Skinny Genes is the perfect Cherik song?? At least the first verse + chorus, I just can't get over it.


End file.
